One of the worst features of the way digital assets are designed is that if you lose the key to your digital assets, you can’t get them back.

Humans are the weak point of any system. There are no locksmiths in the crypto ecosystem now who can brute force their way back into a wallet address for you.

When is Bitcoin considered lost?

When is lost, lost? Well, a report from digital asset forensic firm Chainalysis considers any Bitcoin that hasn’t moved from its current set of addresses for five years or longer as “lost”.

That may not be a safe assumption, however, a lot of people who bought in 2017 have wallet addresses that old they still have the keys for.

How much is lost?

Estimates vary on how much Bitcoin is lost already, and how much is being lost even as you read this Cane Island Digital Research produced a report which suggests that 4% of available bitcoin is lost each year, and only 14 million of the 21 million theoretical maximum will ever circulate. A report from Chainalysis estimates that 20% of currently mined bitcoins seem to be inaccessible or lost by their definition.

However many are “lost”, these Bitcoins represent over 100 billion dollars of value. Indeed, the anonymous creator(s) of Bitcoin (“Satoshi Nakamoto”) mined around 1,000,000 bitcoins which have never been cashed out or traded. It’s lucky for Bitcoin that they don’t come back and spend them because that would utterly destroy the market.

Lost Bitcoin

Largely, lost bitcoin doesn’t go anywhere, because moving them would require someone to have the key. So they just sit there. Losing the key could be anything from losing a USB drive and not having a paper record of the passphrase, the dog eating your passphrase, a hard disk crash… and this is why it’s good to start writing your wallet passphrases on paper in a safe place.

However, you can lose Bitcoin in other ways. For instance, did you know that other blockchains share the Bitcoin address format? Specifically, blockchains such as Bitcoin Cash that “forked” from Bitcoin. If you send Bitcoin to the right address but the wrong blockchain, it’s gone. It’s like sending a letter to “20 High Street” but getting the town wrong.

It sucks that as a user of crypto you have to know this (and a wallet app should help out), but checking the blockchain of an address is an important step for verification. Be especially wary of Ethereum, btw: Binance Chain addresses (BEP20) look identical to Ethereum ones (ERC20).

Another way you can lose your bitcoin (and this is a bit drastic, but it still happens) is to die. Make sure that if you have crypto holdings, your next of kin know where to find them – otherwise that’s a big part of your estate they’re not seeing again.

You can also throw digital assets away by sending them to a specific address (known as “burning” them). I can’t imagine why you’d want to, but people have been sending “tips” to the Bitcoin genesis block for over a decade. And the inaccessible Ethereum address 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 holds over $80m worth of tokens now.

Stolen Bitcoin

If you don’t have control of your own keys, then your Bitcoin is only as safe as the institution holding them. If your money is at an exchange or with a third party, make sure they have bank-grade security on their wallets, and deposit insurance against hacking. Many Bitcoins were lost from dodgy early exchanges, with early leader Mt Gox being the prime example. Exchanges are under attack all the time.

If you do have control of your own keys, then people can only get your Bitcoin if you give them your keys or send Bitcoin to an address they control. Probably best if you don’t do that.

How to keep your Bitcoin safe

Apart from due diligence on any company you send it to, the main thing you can do is to check the receiving address before you press “send”.

Also, check the transaction fees you’re going to be charged – both the sending fee and any withdrawal fee if you’re withdrawing from an exchange. The final confirmation screen for the payment should give you this information. If the fees are weirdly high, you might want to do the transaction later when things have calmed down.

One thing to beware of is that some companies can’t receive Bitcoin transmissions direct from exchange addresses. If this is true, there will be a clear warning about it when they give you the receiving address and (probably) a QR code.

Safely storing your Bitcoin means safely storing any USB drives, but also means finding a safe place for your wallet address – paper is safest, but maybe make two copies where the dog can’t eat them! Remember: HARDWARE WILL ALWAYS FAIL!

OH NO! THE WORST HAPPENED!

“I sent it to the wrong address”

The transaction can’t be reversed. If you know the owner of the address you sent it to, you can ask for them to send it back, but you can only ask them if you already know their contact details. There is no way to get from a Bitcoin address to contact details without additional external data. Otherwise, there’s no way to correct this problem.

“My assets were stolen”

If this is assets at an exchange, then the exchange owes you big-time and should have procedures in place, though the loss may be too big to handle for them. You should follow the issue and lodge a complaint/claim to make sure the authorities/exchange know what you’ve lost. You’re going to be quite reliant on them to sort this out if the exchange doesn’t do it voluntarily.

If assets were stolen from your wallet through a hack, then it depends on the circumstances of the hack: did you give someone else unauthorised access? Or was it a software bug? Is the wallet provider liable? It’s probably best to shout a lot about this but to expect that your assets are gone.

If your assets were stolen in person under threat of force, then you should report it to the police and take their advice, giving as much information as possible.

For any stolen assets, it’s not impossible that the authorities will find who did it, access their wallets and return the money, but it’s probably best not to rely on that. It’s a good reason to make sure your loss is reported.

Transaction is stuck

Transactions are visible on the blockchain, but in rare circumstances, a transaction can fail to complete; maybe a fee was too low, or there’s a technical blockage somewhere. There may be a “cancel” button on the status page you can get from your wallet or exchange.

If this happens from a centralised exchange, you should report it to see if the transaction can be cancelled from their end. Customer support is your friend.

Lost or Damaged Wallet

This can happen often: phones break. Make sure you have the passphrase written down: some wallets only generate this when you create it and are usually very clear about your writing it down – in fact, they insist on it by testing you on it afterwards.

This means that if you can’t find the passphrase, it’s probably around somewhere unless you just decided rules don’t apply to you when you created the wallet. We’re sure you’re more sensible than that.

If you find the passphrase, then you can reinstall the wallet software, import your keys using the passphrase and hopefully regain access. You don’t have to install the same wallet, and you can import your private keys to multiple wallets: the different wallets won’t even know about each other.

Payment for goods or services that weren’t delivered

The fact that a payment was in digital assets doesn’t alter whatever contractual relationship between you and the vendor might be. Complain using the usual channels.

Security Tokens – a new approach

A new type of digital asset is “security tokens”. These regulated tokens represent a share in a real-world asset. The newer security tokens have a system where all holders of wallet addresses are whitelisted. This means they know who’s holding each token (rather like the stock exchange knows who owns each share of a company). It also means that tokens cannot be sent anywhere unauthorised, and if you lose access you can apply to the issuer of the tokens to be revoked and reissued somewhere handier.

The price for this security is lack of anonymity of course: it’s the opposite of decentralisation.

The post What happens to lost Bitcoin? appeared first on GCISL.

So, it is based on nothing? And why does that nothing keep changing price from something to something else? What is that nothing? Is it a share of something? Is it currency or property?

That last question is an important one: Bitcoin is recognised as a digital currency in many countries, but fewer countries have adopted it as legal tender. Some tax systems think of Bitcoin as a commodity rather than a currency, which changes how it’s taxed. And Bitcoin doesn’t represent a share in any real-world asset: it’s a store of value on its own.

If you were to look at most sources, they’re all in agreement with the rest of economics about what makes something worth something.

1. Scarcity

There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins, and it gets harder to mine them over time. Regardless of what it is, economists believe that the scarcity of something contributes to the value of something. That’s actually the argument for the value of NFTs, which are one-off tokens representing a digital asset. The problem with those is that while a single NFT is scarce, there are lots of competing NFTs.

Not all cryptocurrencies or tokens are limited in number: for instance, there can be infinite numbers of ETH. But, they’re not introduced all at once.

Some believe that scarcity is the engine of Bitcoin’s price growth over the long term.

2. Demand for Bitcoin

As we saw with NFTs, something can be as scarce as it likes, but if no one wants it, it’s worthless. Luckily, there’s a demand for Bitcoin – but that’s highly variable. At times of high demand driven by hype, Bitcoin has reached all-time highs undreamt of by people who were mining it when it was worth £1 (a bull market).

At other times, demand is so poor that supply outweighs it and the price goes down over time (a bear market). If it goes on for a while, it’s called a “crypto winter”. We’re in one now.

3. Production Costs

Part of the argument that Bitcoin is based on “something” and isn’t just created out of thin air is that work has to be done to mine it. Specifically, each bitcoin requires computers all over the world to compete to solve mathematical puzzles by brute force. Where in the early days it could be mined by a laptop, nowadays you need specialised hardware that dates surprisingly quickly, and a lot of electricity (70% of Bitcoin is mined from renewable sources that are cheaper: you don’t hear that statistic a lot).

There are times when the value of the Bitcoin mined is less than the production cost: in those times, miners have to have faith and HODL it until better times. People were still mining Bitcoin in late 2018 when it was just over $2000 and it cost a lot more than that to mine it. They were rewarded later with much higher prices.

4. Competition from other cryptocurrencies

You would think that competition from other cryptocurrencies would have an effect on the overall value of Bitcoin, but it’s not clear that’s happened, even though the market dominance of Bitcoin has decreased from over 80% to a shade over 42%. ETH has more competitors than BTC does, and it’s into ETH competitors that the market cap is going.

In the end, Bitcoin still pulls the market about more than being pulled about by the market (with the exception of one-offs, like the LUNA/UST coin selling off its bitcoin stash).

5. Regulation

Except for the panic caused by FUD news (fear, uncertainty, doubt), the impact of regulation on the price of Bitcoin is difficult to ascertain because regulators are slow-moving, and it could have two distinct effects.

1. Regulation tightening Bitcoin controls (such as fiat off-ramps) might spark selling.
2. Regulations friendlier to institutional involvement in Bitcoin might spark buying.

6. Bitcoin Community News

Sites such as Coindesk always feel like they have to explain why Bitcoin did something on a given day. Usually, that takes the form of looking at the news and then picking something that might (if you squint) cause selling/buying.

While the Bitcoin market was mostly whales and retail investors (because Bitcoin was out of bounds to institutional investors), it was always a bit silly to look at a large amount of Bitcoin being sold in a half-hour period and then somehow assume a lot of individual investors saw some news, decided to sell, went home, logged in, and panic sold – all in the same 30 minutes.

It is true that a whale selling could affect the market substantially: but wouldn’t it be strange if someone experienced enough to become a Bitcoin whale, who had endured crypto winters and threats from regulators was suddenly as twitchy as a newbie? It’s not likely.

However, there is one new kind of whale who is most definitely twitchy enough: at least, when enough of them act in unison with automated trading…

7. Institutional Involvement

You’d think that institutions and funds investing in Bitcoin would be stable and professional. But when a professional in charge of a fund raised on normal stock indexes sees the “risky” crypto part of his portfolio crashing, he’d rather sell now (“reduce his exposure”) and ask questions later.

This is why Bitcoin is now correlated with the stock market to an alarming degree, considering it was supposed to be an alternative investment.

There’s one more factor in the price of Bitcoin: more important than all of the other factors combined, at least on a day-to-day level.

And that’s derivatives with leverage. Or, as some like to call it, gambling.

8. Derivatives

There are many places where you can place bets on Bitcoin going up or down. This is no different in principle to other areas of traditional finance. The idea is that you place a bet on Bitcoin going up or down. The price of Bitcoin at the time you place the bet is all-important. The more Bitcoin moves in your preferred direction, the more money you make until you close the bet. Closing the bet involves Bitcoin being bought or sold using “market orders” – that is, just throwing orders at the market not caring about the price.

Now, one person closing a bet isn’t going to decimate the market. But, if Bitcoin moves the wrong way, the bet gets into more and more trouble until it’s “liquidated” by the exchange: that is, the bet is forcibly closed, Bitcoin is bought, and the gambler loses their money.

Whenever you see a big change in Bitcoin price over a very short amount of time (for instance, in 30 minutes), this will almost certainly be gamblers getting liquidated, with a flood of sells or buys driving the price up or down by brute force. If the price is going up, that’s called a “shorts squeeze” (a “short” is betting something will go down). The opposite, where the price goes down is a “longs squeeze”.

Now, none of this would be too much of a problem if people weren’t trying to magnify the size of their bet, sometimes up to 125 times its normal size, a process called “leverage”: the more leverage, the more you can make, but the more likely you are to get liquidated.

So…

Liquidations of leveraged gamblers are thus the biggest day-to-day effect on Bitcoin. When that’s not happening, Bitcoin usually moves more-or-less sideways, drifts down or drifts up. When whales or institutions dump, or liquidations happen, the price is wrenched up or down, only for the process to repeat.

The post What factors influence the value of Bitcoin? appeared first on GCISL.

Bitcoin isn’t legal tender except in El Salvador and the Central African Republic (CAR).

The CAR adopted it in April 2022: Obed Namsio, Chief of Staff to President Faustin-Archange Touadera, called the move “a decisive step toward opening up new opportunities for our country.”

This illustrates one side of crypto that fans always point out: banking the unbanked. This applies both to consumers, and to businesses (though internet coverage across consumers in CAR is 10%, so not great). The world’s financial system excludes a lot of people and businesses and seems to be intent on excluding more, with entire countries now becoming effectively untethered. Bitcoin is a solution to this.

Bitcoin’s gone mainstream

Apart from those two instances, and despite it not being legal tender anywhere else, Bitcoin has gone very mainstream indeed: Paypal allowing consumers to buy and sell it is merely the latest sign.

Are any companies accepting bitcoin?

Vroom

There are some high-profile sites that accept bitcoin, certainly. Car dealers, for example, include the now-clichéd Lamborghini (a notorious must-have for crypto bros) and sites for the more regular folk. For instance, AutoCoinCars is “an intermediary which facilitates the purchase of vehicles in the UK with bitcoin and other types of cryptocurrencies.”

The choice for rich dudes is BitCars. BitCars’ clients can purchase exotic and expensive cars from different carmakers: Mercedes-Benz, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bentley, Audi, Rolls-Royce, and of course Tesla are all aboard. On the company’s official website, BitCars correctly points out that it began selling Tesla for bitcoin much earlier than Elon Musk.

I think mentioning Elon Musk and Tesla in regards to Bitcoin has been done quite a lot, so we won’t say more here.

Jewellery and Luxury Goods

Prominent luxury names in this sector are BitDials and Franck Muller, but there are lots more as payment processors accepting bitcoin are integrated into websites worldwide. For instance, just one payment provider “bitpay” lists these merchants:

Technology

Of course, technology companies would be silly if they didn’t jump on a method of payment dearly beloved by tech fanatics, so they did. American company “Overstock” was one of the first to jump online, and tech company NewEgg also gets mentioned. Again, bitpay’s list of companies is reasonably packed:

This is probably a good time to mention that there are a whole host of payment platforms that websites can install to accept crypto payments (not just Bitcoin, but also Ethereum, Litecoin and more). Of course, bitpay is one, but Coinbase Commerce is another, and there are many others including NowPayments and Coingate (which sounds like a scandal, but probably isn’t!). There’s an interesting list of payment processors for websites here.

Gift Cards

Of course, it was always unlikely that some shops such as Amazon would directly take bitcoin. But companies such as bitpay (through their wallet app) are quite happy to take your shiny bitcoin and turn it into a gift card. Ssshh, Amazon will never know!

One retailer in the UK who does this is Cryptorefills, which are simply designed to gift-card up your crypto and can be found here.

Debit Cards

Some companies don’t stop at providing ways shops can take bitcoin: they provide ways consumers can easily spend it.

There have never been more debit cards that support spending bitcoin. Wirex offers a UK debit card that directly raids your cryptocurrency wallets for payments (you can even specify in which order it uses your wallets, and you can fund it with pounds and use it like a regular debit card).

Some cards such as Revolut are a bit more indirect, offering debit cards you fund in pounds, but you can convert crypto funds to put on the card.

They’re not the only ones offering debit cards, which means the real answer to “what can you buy with bitcoin” is now effectively “everything!”, even if it isn’t legal tender.

OK, so Bitcoin is useful, how does this relate to GCISL and its leading yield-bearing crypto accounts?

First of all, you can buy bitcoin at GCISL with competitive exchange rates a single transparent commission of 0.35%, and with a flat withdrawal fee of $20 if you send it somewhere else afterwards: you can onboard at our website or download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

But more importantly, you can invest that Bitcoin and earn competitive interest on it while you’re waiting for it to rocket.

Anyway, good luck with your Bitcoin consumerism, whether it’s immediate and splashy, or interest-bearing and slightly delayed!

The post What Can You Buy With Bitcoin? appeared first on GCISL.

Every superhero needs an origin story, and Bitcoin’s is particularly mysterious.

Bitcoin was conceived as a digital replacement for fiat currency (dollars, pounds, euros, etc). It was first proposed in 2008 by “Satoshi Nakamoto”. We still don’t know who that is (and as the private key holder to the first Bitcoin block, they would be wildly rich).

They proposed “Bitcoin” in a white paper, which has obviously become legendary. Investopedia keeps an updated article: “Bitcoin Years Later: Was the Nakamoto White Paper Right?”.

Ethereum

Let’s skip forward to 2013 when a Bitcoin enthusiast called Vitalik Buterin was working on a project called “Mastercoin”. He imagined more for blockchain than just payments, and that same year wrote a white paper proposing “Ethereum” – a virtual, global computer built on blockchain. One crowdfund and a couple of years of development later, the first version launched.

Bitcoin vs Ethereum

Similarities

Bitcoin and Ethereum are both based on blockchain technology, which means the blockchain contains an unalterable record of transactions, with new blocks of transactions being added periodically. When a new block is added, the party that put it there gets a reward.

Bitcoin and Ethereum are both decentralised: there isn’t a single company or party that owns it or controls it, though the Ethereum foundation oversees the engineering. As long as you can get access to the internet, you can use Ethereum or Bitcoin.

They’re also both cryptocurrencies: both have an ever-changing value and can be sent back and forth between parties. They can be bought and sold on cryptocurrency exchanges. It’s possible for someone to use ETH and know nothing about how it works, or why it’s different to Bitcoin.

Bitcoin and Ethereum also settled on a “proof-of-work” mechanism to generate rewards and as a way for the different computers on a network to reach a “consensus” – an agreement on a single source of truth. Woah, heavy. Initially, both could be mined from a laptop, but the difficulty was soon ramped up so that doing this was pointless since laptops couldn’t solve puzzles fast enough. Ethereum also adds blocks faster than Bitcoin, so the puzzles had to be less difficult.

This is the point at which everyone reading wishes there were time machines.

Differences

There are lots of cryptocurrencies that are very similar to Bitcoin because they were based on a large part of its technology, for instance, Litecoin (Bitcoin’s little brother) and Bitcoin Cash (the Robbie Williams to Bitcoin’s Take That).

Ethereum’s code and design were different in all respects: as you’d expect, since it was designed for a completely different reason to Bitcoin: it was designed as a world computer, not as an alternative currency.

Among many innovations, the primary one was Smart Contracts – pieces of computer code residing on the blockchain that could be triggered to perform functions if certain conditions were met (if you pay a little ETH to run it). Ethereum didn’t invent the idea of Smart Contracts, but it made them smarter: for instance, transactions can even contain executable code as data!

The other ability built into Ethereum from the start was the ability to use Smart Contracts to allow the creation of tokens: essentially, other currencies that used the Ethereum infrastructure. This exploded after the ERC20 standard was created. A token that adheres to ERC20 is guaranteed to be compatible with Ethereum wallets. Other standards were created that resulted in NFTs (one-off tokens) and Security Tokens (regulated tokens representing a fractional share of a real-world asset).

Having thousands of tokens on one blockchain (including ones called “stablecoins” that represent real-world assets like the US dollar and gold), means that you could build an entire finance ecosystem on Ethereum: which people did!

Bitcoin wasn’t built with the ability to host other coins, but a 2014 project called “Mastercoin” (the same one Vitalik Buterin worked for), created a layer over the top of Bitcoin to allow it. The name of that was later changed to “Omni”. By far the most successful was Tether, a controversial dollar replacement stablecoin. Because it was on the Bitcoin blockchain, it was the obvious choice for exchanges to use as a substitute for the real dollar in trading.

Because humans are awfully clever, there’s now a Tether and a Bitcoin (called “Wrapped Bitcoin”) on the Ethereum blockchain too.

Oh, and one big difference: there can only ever be 21 million bitcoins (they’ve mined 18 million so far), but there’s unlimited Ethereum.

Another oncoming difference is that Ethereum is moving to “Proof-of-Stake” instead of the Bitcoin-inspired “Proof-of-Work” – that is, instead of new coins (and the right to add blocks) going to computers that do the most work, the rewards will go to people who “stake” their coins back into the blockchain.

Gold and Silver

Bitcoin is often called “digital gold” since it’s a “store of wealth” (and gold in the real world, while useful, is more of a store of value than anything else – 92% of the world’s gold is used for storing wealth).

Ethereum is often called “digital silver”, because people love comparisons and because Ethereum is the second-biggest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin by market value. Also, Ethereum, like silver, is useful for all sorts of things.

At the time of writing, here are the market shares for cryptocurrencies: note that nothing competes with Bitcoin and Ethereum for sheer size:

You can check out today’s values here.

Bitcoin or Ethereum – what’s your position?

It’s easy to be glib, here – for instance, saying that the Earth and Water astrological signs should be like Bitcoin because it’s more stable and solid, whereas Fire and Air signs enjoy the quicker market, versatility and drive of Ethereum.

One mistake investors in both make are assuming that when one of them goes up, the other goes down. In general, Ethereum follows Bitcoin. There may be days when one is up and one is down, but in a market downturn, they both go down against the dollar (dragging the rest of the cryptocurrency ecosystem with them).

What’s more, the crypto market is now more correlated with the stock markets than it’s ever been, because of the increasing entanglement between them as crypto becomes a viable alternative investment for portfolios.

Bitcoin’s prospects for the future are based on its increasing ability for financial transactions, but also its scarcity. While it goes up and down, the five-year picture is always up. Apart from making transactions faster, there are no particularly big changes or milestones for Bitcoin coming up.

Not so for Ethereum, which is about to have the most important upgrade of its life. It needs it, too, because it’s become too successful for its own good, resulting in networks becoming clogged and transaction fees going through the roof.

If the upgrade works out, then traditional finance might jump across to an Ethereum infrastructure that offers instant settlement and 24/7 trading. Why choose Ethereum for that? Mostly because of its perceived safety and “unhackability”. If that happens, then the price of Ethereum might surpass Bitcoin, despite being in unlimited supply (the maximum number might be unlimited, but the rate it’s being produced is time-limited, so there is scarcity there).

Our crystal ball isn’t working, so unfortunately only time will tell whether any of this works out.

One thing that is certain is that you can easily buy your bitcoin and ether at GCISL with one single low commission of 0.35% and a competitive exchange rate, and then invest it for monthly interest.

Go to our website or download the app from the App Store or Google Play, and sign up today. Get verified, fund your account with GBP or EUR, and start your crypto journey.

The post Ethereum vs Bitcoin – What’s The Difference? appeared first on GCISL.

People didn’t see Bitcoin coming: the idea seemingly came out of nowhere from “Satoshi Nakamoto” (we still don’t know for sure who that was!).

When people did hear about it, they generally ignored it. It was easy to earn (you could run the software on a laptop and generate coins), but it was technical, and the values of each Bitcoin were tiny. It felt like a “toy” currency.

Later on, it became synonymous with dodgy dealings, thanks to “Silk Road”, a digital black-market platform that was popular for hosting money laundering activities and illegal drug transactions (closed in 2013 by the FBI). Early on, there weren’t even exchanges: to buy and sell crypto in the UK, you had to go to a vape shop near Kings Cross station! Even early adopters had no idea of what Bitcoin would become, though they dreamed of it one day becoming a legitimate currency.

In the next few years, Bitcoin would get increasingly more respectable. The industry went from cancelling people’s bank accounts if they even sent money to a cryptocurrency exchange, to offering crypto on PayPal and through reputable financial establishments.

Nowadays, Bitcoin is getting more and more respectable, even if its tendency to change value very quickly hasn’t diminished over the years.

Handling this “volatility” is one of the keys to understanding Bitcoin and establishing an effective Bitcoin investment strategy: we’ll talk later about that.

For now, whenever you buy Bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency), there will probably be times that it’s worth less than you paid. And there might be times when it’s worth more than you paid, even if you did succumb to FOMO (“fear of missing out”) and buy at the top of the market.

How to Invest in Bitcoin

So, how would you start investing in Bitcoin? Well, buying some and storing it safely is a good start: you need to look for reliable companies that use hardened bank-grade security to protect wallets.

One great place to do that is GCISL. Even while Bitcoin is riding the financial rollercoaster, you can earn more of it every day, guaranteed (even during a downturn).

Sign up and Open an GCISL account

A journey starts with a single step and opening an GCISL account is the beginning of this journey.

If you’re mobile-inclined, download the GCISL Web from the App Store or Google Play. You can also onboard on the aqru.io website. The process is straightforward and self-explanatory.

Once you’ve done that, you’re immediately given a free 10 USDC (the crypto equivalent of 10 dollars), which you can then practice investing at up to 7% interest. Hey, free money is free money!

After that comes verification: to prove you’re who you say you are!

Verification

Part of the transformation of crypto is a journey to regulation, and GCISL takes its responsibilities very seriously.

So the next step is to show you’re serious, and as always, that means documents (sorry): usually a photo ID (a passport or driving licence) and a proof of address.

Once these are submitted, there’s a pause for verification, so have a cup of tea. Maybe three.

After you’ve been verified (you’re welcome!), you should also secure your account. With any financial account, you should not only have an email/password combination but add an extra layer of security. Our onboarding process at GCISL will guide you through choosing a suitable one.

Fund your account

The key to earning interest is having funds to earn interest on, alas, and this is the point where you send funds to GCISL to invest on your behalf (see the app for the current interest rates).

You have three options for getting funds into GCISL.

1. Send in your existing Bitcoin. GCISL will provide you with a wallet address to send your Bitcoin to, and this needs to be entered into your Bitcoin wallet or at the exchange.
2. GBP/EUR bank transfers, like any other bank transfer. The most important thing to remember about this method of payment is that the bank account needs to be in the same name as the name of the GCISL account holder. This restriction is common across the reputable industry. Once you’ve sent your funds in, GCISL can convert them to Bitcoin for you fee-free and at a great exchange rate, but you control the timing.
3. Debit card purchase using MoonPay. This is more expensive than (2) because third-party fees apply, but you still get a good Bitcoin rate and the Bitcoin stashed straight into your GCISL account without any further fuss.

Invest in Bitcoin

To start earning interest in GCISL, press the “invest” button and commit funds. If you don’t do that, then you’re using GCISL as a wallet!

Once you press the button, you have the choice of:

1. Bitcoin
2. Ethereum – the Pepsi to Bitcoin’s Coca-Cola
3. USD Stablecoin (currently USDC, which is a dollar-tracking virtual coin)

The current yield rates are displayed in the app and there are no tiers: all of your funds in any given investment account gets the same rate. For most investment accounts there is no lock-in period, so you can disinvest at any time, and even sell your Bitcoin back to regular currency.

The only fee charged by GCISL is a $20 flat fee if you withdraw your crypto to an external crypto wallet.

Watch your investment grow

GCISL’s interest is added every day, but you can see it mounting up in real-time. There’s something addictive about seeing your wealth go up in real-time to 15 decimal places!

Is Bitcoin a Good Investment?

In many ways, that’s the wrong question to ask. The big question is: is Bitcoin a genuine investment, and is it right for you?

Bitcoin’s history says yes. There’s a long-term upward trend (with a lot of volatility at shorter time periods, of course). There’s increased usage and availability of Bitcoin, as well as an acceptance worldwide that as a concept, it’s acceptable. It’s survived wars, fear, uncertainty and doubt and always sprung back. And, its inner workings are transparent, which is more than you can say for the stock market or investment brokers!

Bitcoin is also a liquid investment – that is, you can buy and sell it easily in a market that isn’t dominated by a few large players (called “whales”). If you have a million pounds of Bitcoin to sell… well, go for it.

Pros and Cons of Bitcoin Investing

Having established that by investing in Bitcoin you’re not throwing your money down a toilet, what are the pros and cons of investing in it?

Pros:

• Bitcoin can be bought in small quantities from reputable sources, so it’s an easy way to enter the crypto market without bringing your house down.
• The potential for long-term gains is amazing, especially if you buy at the bottom of a market.
• It gives you something to talk about at parties.

Cons:

• Bitcoin is volatile, though the hope is that one day it will be less so. The day-to-day volatility makes picking an entry point psychologically difficult. That volatility is also one of the reasons why yields on Bitcoin can be bigger than traditional finance.
• The price variation from day to day is emotionally quite difficult unless you simply switch off from worrying about it and regard it as a long-term investment.
• Working out tax on a Bitcoin investment can be a bit harder because Bitcoin is treated by some tax authorities as “property”, not currency – though this isn’t much different to the way stocks and shares are treated. But it does mean that you have to keep an eye on the rules.
• There is also no way, currently, to include a Bitcoin investment in an ISA.
• Talking about Bitcoin at parties often results in uninteresting conversations about Bitcoin and yachts. Avoid!

Tips for Investing in Bitcoin

Understand Risk Tolerance

Cryptocurrency is classified as a high-risk investment. Bitcoin is at the conservative end of that assessment, of course: it’s the biggest, most stable cryptocurrency and it’s not going anywhere.

Where on the spectrum are you between “risk-averse” and “risk-tolerant”? If you’re reading articles like this, it’s a fair bet you’re not a conservative investor, but you should never invest anything you can’t afford to lose.

Having said that, Bitcoin at least has shown a long-term upward trend. It’s increasingly difficult to “mine”, and there’s a fixed number of coins that will ever exist, so that bit was built in.

The emphasis here is on “long-term”, of course. If you’re willing to be patient, you can turn a high-risk investment into a medium-risk one, because you can choose when to exit and (hopefully) turn a profit.

Of course, it helps if your assets are working for you during that time, like they would be at GCISL, earning yield.

Diversify your portfolio

Diversifying your portfolio is more difficult than it used to be. New crypto investors are often surprised to find out that buying different kinds of cryptocurrency doesn’t result in safety against crashes: all of the major coins tend to move in the same direction at the same time.

“Aha! A mix of stocks/shares and crypto, that’ll do it!”

Well, the crypto market is now, according to the Wall Street Journal, much more correlated with the stock market than it used to be. Having a bundle of stocks and shares and crypto in the same portfolio isn’t necessarily the hedge against the market you might think. In the wider world, traditional finance investment tends to be inflexible, expensive, opaque and risky.

So, is there any way you can realistically diversify your portfolio?

Yes – stablecoins. At GCISL, there’s a stablecoin called “USDC” – US Dollar Coin, which is issued by a company called Circle. It’s a digital currency that is designed not to move against the US dollar, but which can still generate more yield/interest than traditional finance. USDC is backed with actual US dollars and is a good placeholder until the US gets its own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

When you transfer your funds to GCISL, you don’t have to put it all in Bitcoin: you can put some of it in an interest-earning USDC investment account. You can also put some in Ethereum. While Bitcoin and Ethereum tend to move in tandem, they both might generate different rates of growth in the future.

Start Small (it’s easy with GCISL!)

One of the nice things about crypto, compared with traditional finance, is that it’s a lot easier to get started, and it operates 24/7.

If you don’t have big lump sums (and let’s face it, who does these days?), then small but regular investing is the best option, and also takes advantage of what they call “Dollar Cost Averaging”: where you’re buying small amounts regularly at different prices, which evens out your overall risk.

For instance, if you bought Bitcoin in April at the rate of $35,000 per Bitcoin, and in May at $30,000 per Bitcoin, your existing Bitcoin would theoretically be worth less, but your May purchase would take advantage of the price drop to buy more Bitcoin.

GCISL’s minimum deposit is only 100 euros, so you can start reasonably small and build from there.

It wouldn’t be an GCISL blog post without mentioning the 100 USDC referral reward (T&Cs apply)!

Security

It’s probably best to mention that GCISL also has a safety-first approach to risk and reward, which ensures long-term viability in a necessarily volatile market. GCISL uses its expertise to navigate the decentralised finance markets so you don’t have to, and you share in those rewards.

We also use bank-grade security to protect your deposits. Which is good to know.

Join for free today to start your Bitcoin investment journey!

The post Best Bitcoin Investment Strategies appeared first on GCISL.

If you’re reading this, you might be thinking about buying some of those sweet, sweet, satoshis (there are 100 million satoshis in a bitcoin – it’s called that after the originator of the currency).

But, you’re smart. You’re thinking ahead. You’re thinking “where do I put this virtual coin when I’ve bought it?” So, let’s explain Bitcoin wallets.

The job of any wallet, real or virtual, is to keep funds safe: to allow you to access them but to stop everyone else. But how do you protect something that only exists digitally?

A bitcoin only exists on a blockchain. A blockchain is a worldwide shared database of transactions. It also provides an almost unlimited number of addresses: numbered slots that can have bitcoin in them. These “public” addresses are the key to sending and receiving bitcoin, and look like this:

3FZbgi29cpjq2GjdwV8eyHuJJnkLtktZc5

Catchy, huh? Bitcoin addresses always start with a 1 or a 3. It’s quite safe for these to be viewed by the public – if you don’t give them out, you can’t be sent funds.

But how do you get custody of those startling satoshis? Well, by owning the key to the address: a key only you own (that’s why they call it a “private key”).

Here’s what a private key looks like:

E9873D79C6D87DC0FB6A5778633389F4453213303DA61F20BD67FC233AA33262

Even catchier! Letting this key out in public lets anyone into your stash.

A wallet is a collection of addresses and private keys.

All reputable bitcoin wallets will give you a 12-word passphrase that allows you to access your addresses from different wallets, and never expires.

What type of bitcoin wallet can I choose?

Wallets exist to make it easy to access your Bitcoin. They manage and create addresses and private keys, and some have convenience features that allow you to assign friendly names to your public addresses. They will all allow you to receive and send funds.

Fun fact: you can receive funds into Bitcoin addresses without your wallet being connected, just like you can receive funds into your bank account while you’re not logged into your banking app. The address is always online, even if the key to access it isn’t.

In general, the nearer to the internet the wallet is, the less secure it is.

Wallets that are always connected to the internet are called “hot wallets”, and ones that aren’t are called “cold wallets”. You can’t send or receive Bitcoin from cold wallets, except by connecting them to the internet to do it, but they don’t need to be connected for long.

The first thing every piece of wallet software will do when creating a new wallet is to create a 12-word passphrase. This is the proof that you “own” your crypto and is the ultimate key to your stash. Write it down so you can recover it or import it into other software. Keep it safe: it could get wet, burned, ogled, or nicked. This is the ultimate backup!

A word about exchanges

In theory, keeping Bitcoin at centralised exchanges is regarded as the riskiest thing to do because they’re a major target for hackers. However, security at the best exchanges is much better than it used to be. You still don’t “own” your coins though. If you’re going to trade using exchanges such as Coinbase or Coinfloor, you would normally need to send your Bitcoin to the exchange to do it. Some people buy Bitcoin at an exchange and then just wait to sell it again. It’s a choice, but it’s a lot of trust to put in a company.

Exchange Wallets

Many centralised cryptocurrency exchanges now make mobile wallet apps too, such as Coinbase Wallet and Trust Wallet (which is connected to the Binance exchange). These are usually easier to use than other mobile Bitcoin wallets because they’re aimed at retail investors and there are more funds to develop them. However, they do tend to tie themselves into the exchange they came from.

Mobile Bitcoin Wallets

Best examples: Exodus, Mycelium, Electrum (Android only).

The best wallet apps are now hardened to hacking nowadays, but there have been reported instances of muggers forcing people to log into their crypto app (by force, if necessary) and then getting them to transfer coins. If you’ve got substantial crypto reserves, it might be best not to wander around with them all the time. It’s asking for trouble.

If you’ve got a rich crypto stash, it might be an idea to keep the wallet software on another phone (perhaps an old one) or use a desktop solution. You wouldn’t carry around thousands of pounds in your real wallet, so why carry around thousands on your phone?

While Mycelium and Electrum are for advanced users, Exodus is more user-friendly, has a desktop version, and supports hardware wallets (see below!).

Should you use a mobile bitcoin wallet?

While they’re convenient and portable, ideal for face-to-face transactions, especially using QR codes, app marketplaces might delist or remove a wallet making it difficult to receive future updates, and damaging or losing your device can lead to loss of funds (if you didn’t write the passphrase down).

Desktop Wallet

Bitcoin.org, one of the most official sites for bitcoin, has a wallet chooser that asks you numerous questions to find the best Bitcoin wallet for you.

Delving into their list reveals Electrum (desktop version) as one of the best desktop wallets, though as we mentioned, Exodus also has a mobile version which is highly thought of.

One of the advantages of desktop wallets is that they have a lot more screen to play with, so you can have a lot more visibility over your funds than on a tiny mobile screen: though this can turn into a disadvantage if the app uses that space to display more widgets than a NASA display.

A disadvantage is that desktop wallets are more susceptible to viruses or exploits, so keeping your machine protected and updated is a must.

Some desktop wallets such as Exodus support hardware wallets.

Hardware Wallet

A hardware wallet is a USB device that stores the details of your keys. It will generate a passphrase for itself like anything else does which is the ultimate backup protection.

Quite often devices like this are protected by PINs or biometrics so that they can’t be used on a PC without an authorised user.

When hardware wallets are connected to a PC successfully, they can be accessed by compatible desktop wallet software like Exodus. This means you can do the normal things you’d do in a desktop wallet, but it leaves no trace on your hard disk or in your browser.

The big names in hardware wallets are Trezor and Ledger, which supply devices of all shapes and sizes that you can buy on Amazon. There are, as you’d expect, a lot of more generic cheaper devices. Even if they’re honest, they may not be reliable.

Of course, any device from these two big names would handle Bitcoin (and Ethereum), but most wallets handle a lot more than that. Which one to buy depends on your needs and your budget: do you want a lot of coins? How big do you want your device: small devices are more losable!

A very interesting alternative to the two big names is Mycelium Entropy, which is a small USB device that uses hardware based entropy to generate printable Bitcoin paper wallets. That’s what I call synergy! Though it’s currently out of stock.

Sitting crypto earns nothing!

Of course, one common aspect of all wallets is that without further action, your crypto just sits there. If you don’t need it for active trading, or you just want to buy Bitcoin to invest and earn interest, then you might want to consider GCISL’s interest-bearing crypto investment accounts, where you can earn interest on your bitcoin, paid daily (rates vary and are available on the app and website).

When you sign up, you even get 10 digital dollars (USDC) to invest to test the system (don’t worry, it’s yours to keep!).

If you already have Bitcoin, you can use your wallet to send it to GCISL easily with no deposit fees.

If you don’t, you can send in GBP or EUR by bank transfer and swap it for bitcoin at great rates (and also, no deposit fee).

You can also buy Bitcoin with a debit card from trusted third-party payment processor MoonPay.

Whichever way you go, once you’re signed up, verified and funded, you can press that “invest” button to invest your Bitcoin, and then watch it grow. Or, set it and forget it – despite its volatility, everyone’s hopeful it will be worth more in five years.

Whatever you do with your Bitcoin, we wish you good luck – and stay safe: the main risks in crypto are mostly human-based, so stay alert and sensible and you should have a safe crypto trip.

The post How do you create a Bitcoin wallet? appeared first on GCISL.

If you read about Cryptocurrency, you’ll hear the word “volatile” a lot: this means that the price can change quickly, and by a substantial amount (10% in a day isn’t uncommon, either way). If you own some, looking at a red bar telling you that you’re theoretically 10% poorer isn’t a lot of fun.

Top tips:

• If you’re holding long-term, don’t keep looking at the price! This doesn’t mitigate any price drop, but it does save your sanity!
• Don’t invest money you can’t afford to lose. Seeing your mortgage money for the next month disappearing because of volatility isn’t the most stressful thing in the world, but it’s close!
• Trading is difficult. Exchanges are the cheapest place to buy Crypto, but they’re also a great place to lose money.
• Don’t let Crypto sit idle – there are ways to make it work for you.

Volatility – change is scary

But why does Crypto change so much? Believe it or not, Bitcoin isn’t the most volatile Crypto: not even close. Much smaller Cryptos/tokens are much worse, to the extent that a single “whale” (someone who owns a lot of the tokens) can unbalance the market.

This is simply because of the way trading exchanges work: the more tokens there are on sale, the more difficult it is to move the price. Bitcoin has a huge volume of transactions a day, so it actually takes a lot to move it.

So why does it move? The common reason given is that Crypto is “sentiment-driven”. The theory is that bad news (or even fake bad news, such as “India bans Crypto”) makes everyone sell their tokens in a panic. Equally, websites covering Crypto prices have a pressing need to explain any price movement by referring to something that happened that day/week. The problem in that explanation is that when the price does move dramatically, it does so in a very short space of time: around 30 minutes. So, how likely is it that all those Crypto holders all read the news at once, login, and sell their Crypto into a falling market like complete newcomers?

The simple answer is: they don’t. Obviously, some will, but not enough to move things substantially.

But why does it actually move that much? Well, there are two reasons. One is automated trading and bots (often badly written). The other is gamblers.

Gambling is not good for your health

One of the most lucrative (but most dangerous) ways to make money on Bitcoin (or other Cryptos), is to bet on it going up or down in the future at a centralised exchange. These bets are called “shorts” (betting it will go down) and “longs” (betting it will go up). If it goes too far the wrong way, your bet gets “liquidated”, and the exchange uses your money to put in lots of orders for Bitcoin at whatever price it is.

The main problem is that these people use what’s called “leverage” to make bets up to 100 times bigger than the money they have (borrowing Crypto to do it). The more leverage a person takes, the less Bitcoin has to move price-wise before wipe-out.

So, a small market reaction to bad news can be amplified into a big price movement as it wipes greedy people out, causing a chain reaction as a lot of orders are placed on the market in a small space of time.

Can you see it coming?

People who analyse markets use what’s called “Technical Analysis”. This looks at patterns of trades to make predictions. These techniques generally work pretty well in traditional finance, but in Crypto, they just can’t see this coming. And since automated trading bots work on “Technical Analysis”, they tend to get caught unawares (especially since many of them stop trading when prices move too fast!).

Bear Markets

It’s not only Bitcoin gorillas that are scary. A bear market is generally when prices have fallen more than 20% from their all-time high. While the big falls in Bitcoin are scary, bear markets are depressing, unless you’ve got a strategy – then they’re only mildly upsetting!

Stay calm!

This is great advice. In fact, in many ways, the sanest way to deal with Cryptocurrency is to buy what you need, put it somewhere useful (like GCISL.com) and not look at it for five years.

At this point, I should mention FOMO (“Fear of Missing Out”) and “FUD” (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Both of these are perfectly natural things to feel, but for goodness’ sake, don’t take any notice of either. Crypto has had a lot of FUD. For much of its life, it has faced politicians and banks hostile to it. The fear that it would suddenly be banned and crash to zero wasn’t unreasonable (that fear has largely gone away now).

Equally, because the prices rise so fast, it’s easy to get FOMO’d chasing a price you think won’t come down again (spoiler: it probably will, if you’re patient).

Crypto is no place for emotion.

You need a plan

What are you expecting out of Crypto? Quick profits? Or a long-term investment? Perhaps something in-between? How are you going to get your Crypto? What are you going to do with it while it’s sitting there? Are you happy with your asset changing value against the dollar daily?

Quick profits are possible but stressful and it’s much easier to lose than win. For instance, you could watch the Bitcoin price like a hawk, watch for a big 30-minute dip, buy-in and sell an hour later. It’s like catching a falling knife, but it’s a quick 10% or so.

Exchanges actually in the UK are few and far between but include CoinJar UK (limited selection of coins) and CoinCorner (Bitcoin only).

Otherwise, the main parts of your plan are:

1. What Crypto to buy,
2. How to buy it, and
3. Where to put it.

Long-term thinking

For most people, Crypto really needs to be a long-term investment. When you do this, Bitcoin price drops day-to-day don’t really matter because Bitcoin tends up against the dollar over five year periods. This is partly because of scarcity (only 21,000,000 of them can ever exist) and partly due to the fact that it becomes more difficult to “mine” new ones as time goes on.

Legislation will probably bring an end to the worst of the gambling at some point too, at which point a bigger Bitcoin and less gambling will result in a much more stable price.

What coins to buy?

As Crypto goes, the safest ones are Bitcoin and Ethereum: they’re not going anywhere, they’ve survived all the legal attacks, and they’re too big to easily manipulate.

How risky are you feeling? If “value against real-world currencies” is a concern, then you buy Stablecoins (though that’s pointless unless you do something with them – like invest them in an interest-bearing Crypto account). If you believe Bitcoin is the future, you might feel more like maximising your Crypto. Maybe you feel like having a basket of both?

It’s up to you, but the important thing to remember is that unlike in the olden days of yore (2017), there are now companies such as GCISL that offer good rates of interest on Crypto.

How to buy your stash?

Even buying your initial Crypto can be scary: what if you’re buying at the top of a market? What if it goes down five minutes later?

All these are valid worries, though buying Bitcoin on a depressed day makes sense if you’re buying it all at once. For Stablecoins, there’s no bad day to buy.

Many people use “DCA” to mitigate the price of Crypto: that is, they buy smaller amounts at regular intervals and invest it so that the price movements are averaged out. Most financial experts wouldn’t complain at you if you did this.

As of writing, Crypto transmission fees and exchange withdrawal fees are so high that you should buy your Crypto “near” to where you want to use it: buying it in-app if possible so that it goes straight into your account (though you will always pay fees on credit card transactions).

GCISL, which has an app and website offering up to 7% interest on dollar Stablecoins and 0% interest on Bitcoin and Ethereum, uses a trusted third-party provider MoonPay to process card payments to Crypto. It also accepts wire transfers and transfers from other wallets. If you want to see it in action, you get 10USDC invested on your behalf straight away! Sign up for free today to see what all the fuss is about!

The post How to mitigate Bitcoin price drops? appeared first on GCISL.

Regular money left sitting anywhere is devalued by the day, regular interest rates are poor, and banks are greedy, so putting your assets into a “store of value” is a good first step.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should never invest money you can’t afford to lose, whether it’s in Cryptocurrency or the regular markets.

Bitcoin is a “store of value”.

Bitcoin, created in response to the financial crisis of 2008, is Cryptocurrency’s King Kong – the first, and the biggest. It’s often called “digital gold”.

Bitcoin goes up and down in value day-to-day, sometimes by a lot. But Bitcoin has always increased in value over the longer term, despite ups and downs.

This is partly built-in. For starters, there’s a limited maximum number of Bitcoins: 21,000,000. There will never be more than that, it’s technically impossible. This means scarcity. Banks can print money, but no one can print Bitcoin. Now the regulations around Bitcoin have been made considerably clearer, much of the worry about “will Bitcoin be here tomorrow?” has gone.

How do they make Bitcoin?

How do Bitcoins get created or issued? The process is called “mining” – Bitcoins are “found” by making computers solve maths puzzles by brute force. This uses electricity, and this process essentially converts electricity to Bitcoin.

Also, it gets harder and harder to “mine” them over time, because the difficulty ramps up every so often as the system requires more and more accuracy to find a Bitcoin. These days it’s so hard that people have to create “mining pools” to look for Bitcoins and share any they find.

How do you make Bitcoin? Bitcoin savings accounts!

Luckily for you, there’s an easy way to make Bitcoin for yourself: open a Bitcoin savings account and start earning interest on your Bitcoin. What kind of rates? Substantially more than banks are offering!

How is this possible? Well, it’s good old capitalism. Top-rated Bitcoin savings account provider GCISL is refreshingly transparent about how it does it and you can learn more about the process here.

Because Cryptocurrency is a young market, businesses raising funds in Cryptocurrency have less choice and less flexibility. That means that interest rates charged to them can be larger than interest rates that might be charged by banks (although not much higher, because banks demand huge profit margins). GCISL builds a business by passing that interest on to you, in exchange for being able to lend out your tokens.

How do I get started?

It all starts with a visit to our website, or downloading the GCISL Web from your favourite app store (App Store or Google Play).

GCISL’s easy-to-use app allows you to buy, invest and earn interest on your Crypto assets. Not only is the annual interest paid daily, but you can also track it to the second on the app.

There’s also a great incentive to try it – it’s free to sign up!

“Try for free with 10 USDC on us.”

What’s a USDC? Cryptocurrency has a few tokens called “Stablecoins” whose job is to track the value of another asset. Other goodies GCISL are throwing your way include a $75 referral bonus paid in USDC (T&Cs apply, naturally).

Get verified and you’re almost there!

Once you have passed the “Know Your Customer” and Money Laundering checks (never trust any organisation that skips these!), then GCISL puts 10 USDC into your account and you can instantly see it earning interest.

But what of Bitcoin?

GCISL offers a Bitcoin pool giving 0% return on your Bitcoin. That’s an unconditional 0% that applies however much you put in.

Some other providers require you to invest in their own tokens before giving you their best interest rates, or require you to lock up your funds to take advantage of their headline rates.

Other gotchas that GCISL avoids are:

1. fees on deposits (GCISL has none),
2. large minimum deposits (GCISL’s is the equivalent of 100 Euros)
3. fees on withdrawal to Fiat (i.e. regular money).

How do I get money in?

The app and website both guide you through the process of putting money in, and you can use debit cards and bank transfers.

You can also deposit Bitcoin you already own from wallets or exchanges (we’ve put together a friendly introduction to Crypto wallets which you can find here).

If you want to get started really quickly then GCISL has teamed up with trusted payment provider “MoonPay” so that you can buy Bitcoin and put it straight into your Bitcoin pool with no messing (transaction fees may apply if you’re transferring from another wallet).

See our guide on how to invest your funds and start GCISLing here.

Any fees I should be aware of?

When you withdraw funds from the platform there is no fee for fiat withdrawals (i.e. withdrawals to “regular” currency). There is a $20 fee for Crypto withdrawals, charged in the asset you are withdrawing.

Is my stuff safe from hackers?

Yes, GCISL uses leading wallet infrastructure provider Fireblocks to ensure security of assets. We also have a $30 million policy in the event assets are stolen.

Is my stuff safe from you?

Yes! And we’re not offended you asked!

Global Crypto Investment Solutions Limited (GCISL) Ltd. is an Authorised Digital Assets Provider, registered in Bulgaria. Global Crypto Investment Solutions Limited (GCISL) Ltd. (Bulgaria) is a subsidiary of Global Crypto Investment Solutions Limited (GCISL) Ltd. (UK), a private limited company registered in England and Wales (registration no. 13133682).

What other coins do you accept?

You can also deposit or invest in Ethereum (ETH) or multiple stablecoins (USDC).

See you at GCISL! Don’t miss out, earn interest on your Crypto by signing up today!

The post How to earn interest on Bitcoin appeared first on GCISL.

But what is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is a virtual currency. It exists purely in the digital domain and acts as a “store of value” and as a digital currency. It’s not centralised and is independent of Government control (even if the people who use it aren’t!).

Part of its monetary value is based on its scarcity. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins that are built into the rules of the coin itself (onto its “blockchain”). Another part of its value is based on the amount of electricity required to “mine” one. The first way you can make money from Bitcoin is by “mining” new ones: at the time of writing, they’re worth $44,000 each. It’s lucky they’re subdivided into a unit called “Satoshis” (SATs for short) so that you can own less than one Bitcoin.

Mining

Bitcoin is “mined” by being the first to solve a mathematical puzzle by brute force. In the old days, way back in 2009, you could let your laptop run collecting Bitcoin. Then you’d probably have lost interest (because it wasn’t worth anything then) and lost the wallet. It happened a lot more often than you’d think.

As with most things in life, there’s a hard way to mine Bitcoin, a less hard way, and an easy way.

The hard way is to buy the equipment needed and set it up to run 24/7. One problem is that the level of difficulty is much higher than it was, so the chances of one person running one piece of equipment and finding a Bitcoin are pretty much zero. Plus, the equipment drinks electricity. There’s a reason why 70% of Bitcoin is mined with renewable energy: it’s much cheaper!

The less hard way is the same as the hard way, except you join forces with others to mine Bitcoin together in a “pool”. When one finds a Bitcoin, the pooling software divides it according to how much everyone contributes to the pool. This still requires you to run an expensive electricity-sapping box 24/7.

The easy way is to join a cloud mining company. For a flat fee or subscription (depending on the company), you can rent computing power, and benefit from the Bitcoins mined by it.

While the return can be as high as 40%, there are some caveats. A UK-based cloud mining company, Shamining, is one way you can get involved in this.

There are quite a few warnings though. Substantial investment is required to rent enough computing power. Unlike earning interest on Crypto, you never get your initial stake given back: you just hope that it will earn enough Bitcoin to make you a profit or income. You also don’t know how difficult Bitcoin is going to get to find, or what price it will be.

Equally, the companies are unregulated because they’re offering a service for a fee, though the reputable ones will do Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti Money Laundering (AML) checking of customers. They can easily disappear overnight or just stop paying out. It has happened.

Maybe you’re not a “set and forget” type and you like the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat? In which case, trading may be an option for you.

Trading

Trading is rather like the lottery: your chances of making money are a lot less than you would instinctively believe, though, of course, it’s possible to make money if you successfully buy low and sell high. There are a number of things not working in your favour, though. There’s no safety net, your capital is most definitely at risk. The price can vary quite wildly, and you can find your investment worth 10% less in a matter of minutes. If you panic sell, and that’s locked in. Much of the time the Crypto moves sideways providing no profit whatsoever. Then it can move 10% up and back down again while you’re not looking…

The point is: trading is stressful and risky. If you must buy something at an exchange, then use the one with the least fees, an example is INX Crypto. Exchanges like Coinbase are well-known, but with much higher fees.

Buy and HODL

Or perhaps you want to just buy and not sell? “HODL” is reputed to stand for “Hold on for dear life”, though some think it’s just a typo.

If you buy Bitcoin, your sole profit on that comes when you sell it again, hopefully for more dollars than you paid for it. Bitcoin generally goes up in the long-term (say, five years), but swings wildly in the short- and medium- terms (anything up to five years).

The cheapest way to buy Bitcoin would also be an exchange: you have much more control over the price you buy at, and the fees are cheaper. However, some of this cost advantage is lost if you need to send it anywhere else (such as to a wallet or lending app) because of transmission fees. Sometimes it’s cheaper to buy Bitcoin “nearer” to where you want to use it.

As a strategy, HODL is missing one thing: it doesn’t make your assets work. They just sit there. That’s where you can combine a HODL strategy with something more useful.

Earning interest on your Bitcoin with GCISL

If there’s such a thing as a passively active approach, GCISL is it. Our job (via app and website, free sign-up) is to do a similar thing in decentralised finance that banks do in the “real” financial system. That means borrowing resources from people like you (deposits), and then using our expertise behind the scenes to make more money: lending to businesses, providing liquidity to markets, etc. In return, we pay you a fee in the form of interest or yield.

The GCISL difference is that working in Crypto markets means there’s less cash floating about, and thus there’s more opportunity to charge a premium for lending it. Our promise of a 0% yield per year on Bitcoin (and Ethereum) is sizeable compared to what’s currently on offer in the high street.

So, at GCISL, we are an Authorised Digital Assets Provider that can look after your Bitcoin and pay you an interest/yield of 0% per year without you having to do a thing.

We don’t lock up your money, charge a deposit fee, or charge a fee for withdrawing to a “fiat” currency. You can also see the interest being added in real-time, which is kind of fun! There is a $20 fee for withdrawing to a Cryptocurrency, which is our only fee.

If you invest in stablecoins (that is: coins that track assets such as the US Dollar and aren’t as volatile as regular Crypto), you can get up to a 7% yield, which compares astonishingly with the equivalent savings accounts in current markets.

You can even buy tokens in the app through our partnership with trusted provider MoonPay, and save some transmission fees.

We hope that you will consider the benefits of HODL+GCISL. To help you decide, you can sign up for free and get a $10 USDC stablecoin investment made automatically. Once you’re verified, you can deposit using a debit card or bank transfer, use MoonPay or send in external Crypto. The minimum deposit is 100 Euro or equivalent. Don’t miss out, get started and start earning interest on your Bitcoin today!

The post Can you make money from Bitcoin? appeared first on GCISL.